


A Trick of the Mind

by FrecklyLance



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Langst, trick - Freeform, trick or treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-27 06:43:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12575988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrecklyLance/pseuds/FrecklyLance
Summary: Lance is captured and has a lot of time to himself. While the others try to find him in time.





	A Trick of the Mind

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Halloween to everyone!
> 
> But to my Tricker Mason in particular!
> 
> BTW this is as unbeta'd as the day I was born and I am sorry for that.

For Mason

* * *

 

It was cold and it was damp and Lance’s every movement could be heard by the rattling chains binding him to this wall. His armour was missing and his bodysuit was in tatters, giving him prickly goosebumps all over his body. He couldn’t handle this situation, he wasn’t logical like Pidge or level-headed like Shiro.  _ THERE WASN’T A PROTOCOL FOR THIS.  _ How ignorant of them to think that it wouldn’t happen again. How naive of Shiro to not prepare them for this  _ eventuality.  _

 

_ Don’t blame Shiro for this, he suffers enough having to live with the memories. YOU were the one who got caught, you have no one to blame but yourself for this Lance and you know it. _

 

Lance lost his train of thought when he heard the light but fast footsteps through the door of the cell followed by a short exclamation of  _ Vrepit Sa  _ from a distinctly female voice, ice cold and efficient.

 

_ pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease don’t let it be her, please _

 

He had never seen the witch personally. But he had heard the stories, her name made everyone cower in fear across the universe, and he had felt her dark magic before. 

 

Haggar slinked in through the crack of the cell door, her focus completely on him making him alert and petrified.

 

_ Shit. _

* * *

 

The room was tense. That was the only word Coran could think of to describe their situation.  _ Tense.  _

 

_ And quiet. No one knows what to do or say. The only choice we have is to sit and wait around for the Castle and Allura to pick up the Blue Lion’s quintessence and take us there. _

 

It had been ten varga since the blue paladin, Lance, had been recognised as MIA. Even more so when they realised his last check-in transmission was eight varga ago, Coran was ashamed to admit that it took them two varga to realise he had gone missing.

 

_ Surprising, considering Lance always had something to say.  _ Coran thought wryly. 

 

They weren’t even the ones to realise he was missing. Coran’s eyes slid over to the outsider sitting just as tense as everyone else, Prince Lotor. It took their enemy, who Coran had no doubt researched and built up profiles for them all, to ask “but shouldn’t there be five of you?”...

 

He was the mission goal; ‘To capture the Prince who had contacted them on the terms of his surrender and possibly partnership between them’. 

 

Apparently, Lotor had some secret weapon that he was keeping secret and when his father and team turned on him, coming to Voltron was his idea of revenge.They hadn’t gotten to the second part of the plan yet, so Lotor was sporting some handcuffs and was where everyone could see him. Reading his body language Coran noted that while he was tense he didn’t act like he was threatened or at a disadvantage.

 

_ Got to keep an eye on him.  _ Coran wouldn’t put it past the Prince to scheme all this up to have them distracted and vulnerable. Because for all of Voltron’s praises. They were all weaker apart.

* * *

  
  


Lance’s new position gave him a small sense of relief. But he felt more vulnerable than before.

 

He was strapped onto a table, like from those horror or porn movies, as bare as the day he was born beside the binds and the blindfold. But his nakedness didn’t deter Haggar in the slightest of her ‘questioning’.

 

She kept asking him questions, questions he didn’t know the answer to. About Prince Lotor and a new form of Quintessence and parallel universes, which went above his head on a good day.

 

_ Is that what Lotor wanted to discuss in that call?  _ Lance couldn’t help but think. Whatever it was put Haggar on edge and suddenly Lance was glad that he didn’t know anything. 

 

For the first varga anyways...

* * *

  
  


_ How could I let this happen again? _

 

_ Another person in the hands of the Galra and it’s all my fault… _

 

Shiro was the one who had to call Keith and tell him that Lance was MAI, he didn’t take the news very well, declaring he was making his way back to the Castle of Lions to come up with a plan, and Shiro only had so much patience. He couldn’t lash out while the Princess was zoned into looking for the Blue Lion and he had to set an example, so he focussed his pent-up anger on the person who deserved it most of all.

 

Lotor was sitting directly in front of him, he had finished his assessment of the room varga ago and was now just staring inquisitively at Shiro, his golden almost luminous eyes unsettling Shiro and taking him back to the arena. That fact making him even more frustrated and irritable.

 

_ To any gods out there please don’t let Lance fight in the Arena.  _ He wouldn’t wish that fate on his worst enemy never mind Lance. With his deep sea blue eyes and precious grin…  _ They would eat him alive there. _

* * *

  
  


She wasn’t even asking him questions anymore.

 

He thought he got used to the jolts at first. They had a rhythm; ask a question, answer it with an ‘I don’t know’ and a few  _ please _ ’s that involuntarily slip out and then get a rush of electricity.

 

It coursed through his veins, arching his back as far as the chains would go and causing his muscles to spasm. It left him jittery, dehydrated and dreading the next question which would lead to another shock. They danced that way until the smell of burnt hair was cloying up Lance's nostrils. 

 

The blindfold helped his hearing, he was acutely aware of which side Haggar was on and she likes to tease him by tapping the rods together creating a  _ bbbzzztt _ sound that Lance was sure he was gonna hear in the back of his head for the rest of his life. But it also heightened his sense of smell. It left him gagging for fresh air.

 

_ What I wouldn’t give to be on Varadero Beach right now, listening to the waves and feeling the water brush sand through my toes.  _

 

Varadero Beach was pretty popular and always busy, exactly how he liked it. But he also had a little secret place where no one would disrupt him. It was his thinking spot, where he would go if he had some reflection to do, although he did mostly use it as a hiding spot for when he fell out with his siblings. He wondered how his siblings were,  _ safe  _ he hoped and living happy lives.

 

So lost in his own illusion he didn’t notice the  _ swish  _ of tassels and little  _ chinks  _ of the beads that Haggar swung towards him

* * *

  
  


Hunk just wanted Lance to be here, he would know what to do in this situation. But he wasn’t and Hunk was trying to rectify that. Looking briefly at Pidge working on her laptop to pinpoint possible coordinates he could see that she was bothered by the situation but was just as incapable of stopping it as Hunk was too. So he tried to ignore the yelling of Keith who had just arrived and concentrated on his tinkering.

 

But it was getting harder and harder to do. Keith’s ‘How could you let this happen?’ grated him so much because he was right, how could they not realise…. how could  _ he _ , his BEST FRIEND not discern that Lance was quiet and possibly missing for two varga.

 

_ But it’s not like Keith wouldn’t have noticed sooner. He didn’t give Lance barely any recognition when he was on his level in the red lion. He was a ghost to Keith when he was the black paladin… _

 

Hunk angrily continued to work, trying to block out all distractions yet keep an eye out for any news of Lance. He had little success but it was when Keith turned to Lotor that he couldn’t ignore him anymore. He tensed so much to control himself that he snapped the piece of motherboard he was working on. 

 

Glancing up at Pidge who had seen his blunder and was looking worryingly at him over her laptop gave him the courage to speak out to the other paladins.

 

_ How dare they, how dare they just ignore the problem at hand and just let out their feelings. I’m angry too but I’m here actually being productive, like Pidge. They don’t get a pass because they are the leaders. They are starting to hinder OUR work. _

 

_ Do they not care about what could be possibly happening to Lance right now? _

* * *

  
  


He’d done it, after the jolting shocks and scathing cuts and shattering of his bones he had finally managed to zone it out and get lost in his own mind. 

 

_ What a relief, I’m away from that witch. _

 

He could still feel the pain and his body gave little movements every now and again but it seemed far away and thus didn’t affect him anymore. He didn’t want to think about what was happening to his body right now, the possibilities to grim to bear, and he was safe here. It was quiet and it was open, no one could sneak up on him here; not in the middle of the beach surrounded by nothing but water and sand for miles. The sun was nice and warm compared to his cell, making his skin tingle and giving him high visibility. This was exactly where he longed to be.

 

But it was quiet, and Lance didn’t like the quiet because it meant that he was alone and his brain couldn’t stop itself from becoming his worst enemy. He’s spent a few dobashes thinking about how to escape but it was futile. Besides he had no idea to wake up anyways so that squandered any idea of him escaping himself. He would just have to wait for the others to save him.

 

But would they put Shiro through that trauma again for…  _ him? _

 

_ Do they even realise I was missing? _

 

He didn’t know how long he’d been captured for but it felt like a lifetime and he was scared. So scared of dying a million miles away from home on some stupid alien ship. What did they tell his parents? What did his parents tell his siblings? Do they presume him already dead?

 

If only he didn’t get on Blue, if he had just listened to Hunk and stayed in bed that night everything would’ve been fine. Did Hunk blame him for getting them caught up in this? Do the others resent him for flying them away from Earth, like how he resents himself?

 

He thought about it more often then he would like to admit. But he didn’t have anyone to really talk about it with, the others seemed to have their own twosomes. 

 

Allura and Coran were tightly-knitted of course, they always trusted each other with their thoughts and had an understanding of how the other was feeling. Besides, they saw being a Paladin of Voltron as a great honour and Lance didn’t want to be the one who told them wrong. He was already in Allura's bad books enough as it was. 

 

Shiro’s and Keith’s friendship hurt a little bit more that Allura’s and Coran’s. They had a history, Lance knew that but the clear favouritism cut deep and he couldn’t help but feel resentment and jealousy for Keith and some spite towards Shiro, his hero. It wasn’t even actions against him that wound him up, it was when it affected Hunk and Pidge too. Pidge got recognition from time to time but Hunk, Hunk was ignored unless he was cooking or voicing how scared he was and it wound Lance up. 

 

Then came the friendship that hurt the most; Pidge and Hunk. It wasn’t like they were intentionally trying to hurt him but he got jealous of them. How they talked and understood each other, and seem to click in ways Lance couldn’t even start to comprehend.

 

Lance found it hard to make friends, most people only seeming to reach  _ acquaintances.  _ So Hunk was a godsend. At the start they did everything together, Lance only briefly wondering if Hunk found his antics annoying. But after they got into space he drifted towards Pidge. And it  _ hurt.  _ Because he felt like he was being abandoned. They didn’t even try to include him in their stuff like Lance was constantly trying to do at the Garrison. How long had he tried to chip away the armour that was  _ Pidge Gunderson,  _ to include them into the group with some success. 

 

And the fact none of them even thought to include him in anything infuriated him, some of it to directed at them but more so at himself for not being particularly good at machines or being gifted in fighting. Hell one time he cursed himself for not being Altean.

 

They didn’t need him anymore anyway with his toxic thoughts and uselessness. They had five perfect Paladins there counting Keith. Who could easily just hop back into the red lion again. It was perfect like this was meant to happen like it was fate.

 

_ This is a sign of fate. I’m replaceable and this is the world telling me I’m fired, from being a paladin, from being a part of Voltron… from life. I sucked at it anyways, I wasted my life. _

 

It was so much easier to accept his fate, he could finally squash down that scariness he felt and swallow it down.

 

So he sat down in the sand and started to make sandcastles until he met his end.

* * *

  
  


The room was silent after Hunk’s outburst, everyone was shocked at the gentle giant's anger.

 

_ Good, maybe I can actually make some progress now with pinpointing the nearest Galra fleets. After all, that would be the most logical place to snatch him away to. _

 

Pidge put a hand to keys, ready to type again before Allura opened her eyes, eyes full of hope.

 

She had found the general location of the blue lion. Now to see where the closest fleet was. That Pidge could do. They didn’t like feeling useless, they felt useless looking for Matt at the Garrison and when they didn’t have any leads. But they found their brother in this huge thing called space and they can find Lance too goddamnit.

 

_ But I still haven’t found my father… maybe the fleet Lance is on might have some information.  _

 

Fingers flew over keys typing in the coordinates given by the Princess. And there was a clear hit. The Galra wouldn’t abandon something as powerful as a lion completely. Even if it had a force field around it and refuses to move. So the fleet was to the right of it. A distance that made it easier for them to flee should anyone challenged them at the lion.

 

_ Let’s go get lover boy back. _

* * *

  
  


The distant pain… it had stopped. Lance didn’t know what it meant; was he dead? Had the other Paladins come to his rescue? Or did Haggar just eventually grow bored?

 

_ I can’t even keep a crazy lady torturing me interested… _

 

The attempt of humour left him feeling cold despite the warmth of the sun. He was bored, he’d built his sandcastles and now he had a neat row of them waiting for the tide to wash them away. But the tide didn’t seem to be coming in and satisfying Lance’s urges to destroy. So he did it himself.

 

He destroyed them all in different ways; a well-placed football kick there, a forceful stomp here and a devastating punch added in too. It didn’t take as him as long as he liked.

 

_ Now what? How do I get out of here? Do I just wander out? _

 

Lance hesitated to leave the open beach. The local town had many places to fester and wait, he was too afraid to go.

 

_ Maybe if I swim in the ocean it might wake me up. Or if I just swim far away? No one can hurt me in the ocean. _

 

Lance drifted towards the ocean in front of him.

* * *

  
  


Keith was acting like a scorned puppy after Hunk’s outburst. But they had Lance’s location and that was all that mattered. Now it was just a case of bringing him back safe and sound. Keith was confident that they could, they had a solid plan and their expertise on infiltrating Galra ships was worryingly high. His training with the Blade of Mamora also helped their success rate.

 

As he thought it was easy to get into the fleet with Pidge’s invisibility cloak and they all had separate missions and directions to look. But the general rule was to not engage unless necessary. 

 

Keith was the first to break that rule…

 

_ Guess I’m not as Blade as I thought I was, but hey the soldier gave me the location of the cells. _

 

Keith relayed the information and made his way down to the cells, the others meeting him at the meet-up point for support. But when he got there they were all empty, all but one had clearly not been used for a long time. He was in the recently used cell when his back-up, Allura, joined him. 

 

Both of them looking grim at the realisation of not finding Lance they were about to call up to the others to keep searching until they heard voices. They scrambled to hide.

 

It was the witch. Keith could tell from Allura’s grimace. She was yelling at some sentinels ‘FIND THEM, I KNOW THEY ARE HERE. I CAN SENSE THE BLACK PALADIN!’ before she hobbled her way back through to the cells.

 

But her path diverted to a door Keith had failed to notice in the dark and he instantly knew that Lance was in that room. Allura took the initiative and went straight for Haggar. Catching her off-guard and easily subduing her. No doubt Allura wanted to take her back to the Castle, to make her pay for her crimes against the Alteans. That’s was fine with Keith as long as it didn’t interfere with the main mission.

* * *

  
  


Lance was a swimmer. It was the only thing he was good at, he had won competitions and got the trophies to prove it.

 

_ Fat load of good being a good swimmer in space helps. _

 

So he kept swimming and when he heard muffled banging, he swam. When he heard yelling, his name, he swam. It was the only thing he could do.

* * *

  
  


It was the smell that reached them first. A mixture of a repulsive burning smell that had a metallic tang to it, she had come to know that smell as human blood. It made her delicate nose twitch and her throat gag. But that was only foreplay for the sight of him.

 

Displayed on a table covered in so much blood it had become quite an impressive pool on the floor. Both of his legs were bent the wrong way and six of his fingers appeared to be broken at a glance. No doubt there was more damage than what met the eye. His breathing has raspy as well, but that could've been a number of factors.

 

_ At least he’s still breathing. Thank the goddesses, I don’t think I could handle it if one of the Paladins died under my care. _

 

They were careful with him, untying the bonds. But they needed more help to lift him without too much pain. Pidge wouldn’t be much help with their small stature and they didn’t want Hunk to see Lance like this, not if they could help it.

 

Shiro came down in record time, obviously affected by the scenery but determined on the mission. And the three of them got to work on lifting his slowly to a better position to carrying.

 

_ I’m not gonna manage holding Lance carefully if I have Haggar to carry am I? _

 

Giving herself a moment to mourn the loss of justice they started to make progress towards the stairs.

* * *

  
  


He was being moved, and it was the worst pain he had felt in this entire experience. He tried to stay afloat in the water, proving difficult by the searing pain, yelling and begging them to put him down, to give him a break from the excruciating feelings snaking around his body.

 

Of course, they didn’t hear him, he was in the bloody ocean for God’s sake.

 

It became too much, he was tired and his limbs didn’t want to work like they had before. He felt himself slowly sinking into the cool sea water, relieving himself from some of the flames he felt flickering him.

 

_ Deeper _

_ Darker _

_ deeper _

_ blackness  _

* * *

  
  


HE COULDN’T BREATHE.

 

Something was bubbling in his throat and coughs wracked his body, the agony of the movements making him temporarily pass out. 

 

He came back to three heads in his vision; Keith, Allura and Shiro. But he still couldn’t breathe and panicked. Hoping his eyes could convey the issues. Allura was stroking his hair, cooing at him, he tried to make sense of what she was saying but his suffering was too much.

 

Black spots appeared in his vision, his eyes were tired and the pain was starting to dull again.

 

_ They didn’t forget about me. _

 

And then he welcomed Morpheus’s embrace.


End file.
